Dear Smarty
“With more than one million pieces of fan mail, several dozen marriage proposals and an animated feature film in discussion, Smarty Jones shows no signs of diminishing popularity post-retirement.” Marriage proposals? (Bucks County Courier Times)
Comment: Three months away from the Kentucky Derby and several horses have generated Smarty 2.0 hype, such as Rockport Harbor, Shamardal, and Lost in the Fog. Sometimes I get the feeling that racing, as a whole, is looking for a Big Horse: a horse beloved by the nation, a horse that can pack in the crowds not just to watch it race, but to watch others race, and thus save the sport. Smarty Jones was almost that horse, Funny Cide too. Maybe it’ll be Rockport this year or Declan’s Moon. But as nice as the crowds are (and I love to see the crowds — a filled grandstand is a good change from the typical day’s sparse trackside population), I suspect that there is no Big Horse that’ll save racing. For all the love the Smarty fans mentioned in the above article evince for the chestnut colt, there’s little evidence of a love for the game.
